In the past, scholars tended to believe that the internet was an effective tool to challenge authoritarian regimes and facilitate the development of civil society. However, as an expert that has been investigating the issue for a number of years, I disagree with this widely held belief.

Since the Egyptian military ousted former President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government in a coup in July 2013, a stricter and an increasingly oppressive rule governs Africa's third most populous country, but one that may not be that unwelcome with the U.S. or its allies.

The Iran-Saudi "cold war” carries, for both countries, a dimension that raises particular security concerns: the presence of minority communities in their respective backyards that show sympathy to the other side due to domestic repression.

Eight Egyptian men were sentenced to three years in prison plus three years on probation for allegedly attending Egypt’s first same-sex wedding. The harsh sentence was condoned by Egyptian TV host Tamer Amin and the Egyptian Minister for Religious Endowment. Despite the high hopes that existed in the wake of the Arab Spring, the plight of homosexuals in Egypt and the Arab world has deteriorated.

Qatar’s financial habits have been the subject of a lot of media coverage lately due to the successes of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the setbacks the Syrian opposition actors the Gulf states were pinning their hopes on have suffered at the hands of ISIS. Kuwait, through ...

The U.S. should not help Shia Islamists to the detriment of Sunni Islamists. The U.S. should support toleration and moderation in Iraq. Their current policies don’t do this.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated that it would be a serious mistake to ease pressure on Iran in the nuclear ...

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a prominent Middle East scholar at Bar Ilan University, told an audience at the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel that the United States made a great mistake by not dividing Iraq into three states, one Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shia. He believes that this ...

Levana Zamir, the head of the International Association of Jews from Egypt, stressed that Sisi is bringing Egypt in a more cosmopolitan and less hateful direction. She believes that it is good for everyone that he is Egypt’s President.
Levana Zamir, the head of the International Association of Jews from ...

The journalist who broke the story of the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal believes that the al Nusra Front backed by Turkey, not Assad, was responsible for the chemical weapons attack last August. Numerous Turkish commentators disagree with his assessment.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke ...

In his new piece for the New Yorker, “Revolution on Trial: The strange world of the Muslim Brotherhood court cases,” Peter Hessler brings his readers into the courtroom of the ongoing trial against former Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, and his co-defendants. Morsi and a number of other Muslim Brotherhood members are ...

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